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Morandi, Bonnard, and Silences Within

June 25, 2015 by William Eaton

By William Eaton Maintenant, Ethel l’a compris . . . Now Ethel understood: it was the emotion of her great-uncle that was making her shiver. That such a tall and strong man was immobilized; it was because there was a secret in this house, a marvelous, dangerous, fragile secret; the least movement and everything will come to a halt. — J.M.G. Le Clézio, Ritournelle de la faim (my translation) 1 The twentieth-century Italian painter Giorgio Morandi is best […]

Categories: Essay • Tags: art, Bonnard, family, incest, male gaze, Morandi, painting

In Kant’s Wood

June 7, 2015 by William Eaton

On freedom, competition, and the flowering of our species By William Eaton Note: This is the first in a planned series of articles and essays related to conflict—political, economic, social, artistic, internal, . . . Among the early spring-flowering trees the dogwood, Cornus florida, is unrivaled in beauty. It usually grows 15 to 25 feet in height and is generally wider than tall. With fall comes a brilliant show of scarlet to reddish purple foliage and bright red fruit […]

Categories: Essay • Tags: competition, dogwood, Ecclesiastes, freedom, Kant, Pierre Loti, Rousseau, United Nations

On Savoring

December 1, 2014 by William Eaton

Some features of an ethics of tasting, good and bad By William Eaton [I]t is muttered that whenever any government wants to dupe the peasants, it promises the abolition of the wine tax, and as soon as it has duped the peasants, it retains or reintroduces the wine tax. In the wine tax the peasant tastes the bouquet of the government . . . [Karl Marx, The Class Struggles in France, 1848-1850] It tastes twice the price. — […]

Categories: Essay • Tags: Camus, food, France, Paris, restaurants

Distancing / Awareness

November 4, 2014 by William Eaton

How scholarly work could be more informative and integrated, and what a challenge this is! By William Eaton {Note: The following text was prepared to be delivered at the 2014 annual conference of the Association of Graduate Liberal Studies Programs, the theme of which was “Revolutions: Past, Present, and Future.” It has been revised for print publication. It is also one in Zeteo‘s Fall 2014 series of pieces related to borders.} The Personal, The Political, and The Intellectual Zeteo takes a […]

Categories: Essay, Fall 2014 Issue • Tags: Alfred Kinsey, homosexuality, Jean-Luc Godard, male gaze, movies, revolution, science, sexuality

Cancer and Culpability

May 21, 2014 by Walter Cummins

Malignancy in an Imperfect World By Walter Cummins Click here for PDF version. When the Stanford anthropologist S. Lochlain Jain received a diagnosis of breast cancer in her mid thirties, she did what many educated cancer victims do: she wrote a book, Malignant: How Cancer Becomes Us (University of California Press, 2013). In Jain’s case, her work was written after medical intervention resulted in apparent remission, when she could consider the experience in retrospect and examine it in the […]

Categories: Essay, Spring 2014 Issue • Tags: cancer, carcinogens, health, mortality, pharmaceuticals

Parenting: Infinite Responsibility

May 21, 2014 by William Eaton

Steps toward a larger, if alien view of what parenting involves By William Eaton Click here for PDF version (1) Few parents, and only occasionally, allow themselves to think, It is because of me that my child must suffer. Rather we sometimes think of all the many others and other things—rapists, wars, car accidents, bad teachers, infections—that (though we hope not!) may be our children’s lot. We wish we could save our children from some one pain and from all […]

Categories: Essay, Spring 2014 Issue • Tags: birth, children, Freud, innocence, life, parenting, parents

Science B

November 19, 2013 by William Eaton

Click for PDF. Science B By William Eaton William Eaton is the Executive Editor of Zeteo; his explorations appear almost weekly at Montaigbakhtinian.com. Let us begin gently, with, before theory, anecdote. After playing his violin for a range of non-human creatures, Michel-Paul-Guy de Chabanon, an eighteenth-century musician and philosopher, concluded that spiders are pleased by slow, harmonious melodies and will slide down from their webs in order to listen. Small fish, he believed, will surface with the same intent.[1] Like […]

Categories: Essay, Fall 2013 Issue • Tags: bees, love, Pascal, poetry, science

Virtue over Victory

May 1, 2013 by William Eaton

Click here for downloadable PDF. Emphasizing Virtue over Victory Why We Should Adopt a Virtue Ethics Approach to Social Change By Jeffrey Allen Nall A graduate of Rollins College’s Master of Liberal Studies program, Jeffrey Allen Nall teaches philosophy at Indian River State College, Florida. Introduction As important as determining what is morally right or wrong, or how to address moral dilemmas, an important question is all too often overlooked: “Why should I make the often inconvenient effort to do […]

Categories: Essay, Spring 2013 Issue • Tags: virtue ethics

On Being the Enemy

May 1, 2013 by William Eaton

Click here for dowloadable PDF. How Does It Feel To Be The Enemy? An Arab Mother’s Reflections on the Boston Tragedy By Lama Zuhair Khouri I am writing this essay as I sit on a bus heading back to New York from Boston. It is just few days after the Boston Marathon tragedy and my head is pounding with thoughts of those murdered and maimed, and the cries and wails of their loved ones feel almost audible. I came […]

Categories: Essay, Spring 2013 Issue • Tags: Arab-Americans, Erich Fromm, love, W.E.B. Du Bois